At Thirty Paces
by Rallalon
Summary: He's not coming. Not tonight.


He's not coming.

Jack doesn't move from his spot on the roof – won't move. Not for a while yet. When twelve hours can be twelve months, he can't fault the man for being late.

He'll come.

Eventually.

Rolling the large coffee tin between his hands, he savors the chill of the metal, a cold reminder of a touch nigh forgotten. The string attached to the tin twists and twines against itself as Jack continues his idle movements. Nervous movements.

He's not coming.

Not tonight.

.-.-.-.-.-.

There was a man in 1870 who wasn't the Doctor.

He stood leaning against the TARDIS, legs crossed at the ankles and hands buried in his pockets. The pockets of a suit, brown and trim and not right at all. After six months surrounded by suits and fancy dress, the very outfit is jarring, almost fitting and yet not at all. The man wearing it, though…

The man who wasn't the Doctor shuddered slightly as Jack approached, seemed to. It was hard to tell at this distance.

Rose's gloved hand tightened in his, pulled him back. "Jack, I really need to explain-"

"Regeneration," Jack interrupted, having gotten that much of the story from her before. It had started off as the best surprise he'd ever had, seeing her in the street, rushing towards him. And not simply because of the dress. Seeing her – those bright eyes, her gorgeous mouth, her infectious smile – the months of abandonment had fallen away.

Such a scandal for Victorian England, a soldier wildly embracing a young woman in the middle of the street. Rose had been all lace and ruffles and laughter, reaching for him before his mind had fully connected the young woman with ribbons and a bustle with his favorite twenty-first century girl. Connection made, he'd held to her and had yet to fully let her go.

And oh, the shocked faces that had followed them. He hadn't been so thoroughly disapproved of here since his first month in. Fortunately, it didn't matter what the crowds thought, not anymore. He was leaving. He was going home.

The man who wasn't the Doctor – and yet had to be – pushed off of the TARDIS with his shoulder, took a few paces forward before wincing perceptibly.

"I think that's the limit," he said in a London accent and tossed something for him to catch, lobbing the object some thirty feet.

Jack caught it, the action hurting his hand. He looked at the object incredulously, incomprehension flooding his mind. A tape measurer?

"Rose," the man continued, something sad and terrifyingly resigned in his voice, "figure out how far this is."

.-.-.-.-.-.

Paperwork doubles surprisingly well as a pillow, Jack finds, coming back to awareness as slowly as possible. He doesn't need much sleep – hasn't for nearly a century and a half – but he does need some.

"Five more minutes," he mumbles into the crook of his own arm and his sleep-stained mind warps the answering chuckle behind him into the one he's waiting to hear. The hand on his shoulder should be proof enough that it isn't, but he's unwilling to listen to reason, unwilling to accept it just yet.

The hand on his shoulder squeezes lightly and Jack makes a noise that's almost content. He hears the click of a stopwatch and is left to dream until he isn't any longer, the scent of truly fantastic coffee sinking into him. Propping himself up with his elbows, he leans over his desk, back giving him just a little bit of a twinge. Rolling his shoulders, he mutters, "That couldn't've been five minutes."

Ianto watches him as he stretches, and expression on his face that might have been a smirk for any other man. It's soft, except for the fact that it isn't. Ianto flashes him his timepiece and contradicts, "It certainly seems to have been, sir."

A smile tugs at the corners of Jack's lips, tries to have its way with his mouth and ultimately fails. For a moment, though, it nearly comes close. Ianto sees this, makes note of it in that understated way he has. Still, the young man seems to be waiting for something more, paused until he receives a come hither or is told to go away. They keep dancing around this, whatever it is that's between them. Maybe someday they'll deal with it, but not today.

"Thank you," Jack says instead, not clarifying what for. Both of them know he doesn't mean the coffee cup in his hand. At least one of them is starting to realize how good it is to have the man here, good to know Ianto will always show up bright and early in the morning and never comment over how he finds his captain. It's good to know, because Jack's realized:

He's not coming.

He can't be.

.-.-.-.-.-.

If they visited more often, Rose would waste her life, grow old and die without seeing anything at all. Neither Jack nor the Doctor were willing to let that happen. Both of them refused, but it still hurt, being left.

It was the being found again that he lived for.

1871, 1872, 1873… The years dragged by, became punctuated and ultimately defined by the few short days Jack allowed himself every few months, the few short days Rose experienced every week. He never asked her what it was like, watching him live like a time-lapse video. The Doctor certainly never said.

He would never have a chance to adjust to him, this new Doctor. Not fully. He was never going to hug that wiry frame, never going to exchange a quick high-five with him. No chance of dancing, and – a true tragedy – that tie would remain forever unplayed with.

Jack wasn't going to think about that, wasn't going to drive himself mad. He'd get through this, live through it the way he had to. A hundred and thirty more years and they could be together in Rose's time, be together as often as they liked without taking valuable years off his favorite girl's life.

His favorite now, no question about it.

This visit wasn't much unlike any other, at least at the start. Rose took his hand as they ventured into fields and farmland, large open spaces with no one else around. The Doctor walked along on her other side, ten yards away. He drew closer only to stumble and reestablish the distance, smiling sheepishly above the pain of proximity. They called back and forth loudly, the initial strain beneath their conversation soon fading away.

Laughing and so very alive, Rose hugged his arm as conversation turned to Jack's year from their week. Edited, abridged, the words poured out of his mouth, a senseless jumble that failed to be important. He was too busy watching her, watching him.

The Doctor met his gaze squarely, silently reminding Jack of just how much more time he'd had to adjust to this than the Time Lord. Maybe they were too far apart for it to be clearly seen, but Jack knew that look. Resigned, wanting. That was two of them.

He looked at Rose and Rose made it three.

"And did I mention that I really want to shag you guys?" he asked, tagging it onto the end of his story with his best smile. He said it because he meant it and he said it because there was no one else he could say it to. It was a flirt, just a flirt.

Rose bit her lip, a red flush touching her cheeks. In that dress, he could have almost believed her to be part of the time period. Almost, if she weren't smiling like that.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, his new cheeky streak showing up once more: "I didn't hear you, all the way over here."

"Fancy a shag at thirty paces?" Jack called back, cocky as only a man who knows he'll be turned down can be.

"Sounds complicated," the Doctor replied before turning this game on its head. "'Course, brain the size of mine, we're sure to work _something_ out."

Rose grinned. "I'm game."

.-.-.-.-.-.

He prowls the streets one night, daring to search instead of keeping his passive vigil. He thinks of chameleon circuits and watches innocuous objects. He wonders about regeneration and searches for familiar movements in unfamiliar men.

Jack watches, waits even while in action. Distraction is becoming his usual state, one he can't afford. Someone else is going to get killed – always someone else. Still, it's impossible to focus.

It's not good, the way he's finding the callous side of himself take over, the way the conman is taking over the captain. Jack hates it, hates himself, hates not knowing if he's the reason why.

He hasn't come.

But he could.

.-.-.-.-.-.

It wasn't the way any of them had planned it, but it certainly worked.

Light shone through the cracks in the barn walls, illuminating the interior in lines of sunlight flecked with motes of dust. It was a rare day, sunny and bright, giving them enough to see by in the only location where they could make this work. A hotel wouldn't be big enough. But an abandoned barn? Perfect.

Ten feet and a pained Time Lord; twenty feet and a twinge. Thirty, and he was fine, Jack's innate Wrongness unable to muck with the other man's time senses at that distance.

Threesome at thirty feet. It was a good thing he was Jack Harkness, because there was no other being in the known universe who could make this work.

The Doctor was up first, for health reasons, and Jack couldn't complain in the slightest. Stretched out on his stomach, Jack leaned over the edge of the barn loft, wetting his lips at the glorious sight laid out below him.

The overcoat spread over the dirt of the floor, all animal refuse long stale and rotted away, it wasn't the huge bed or shower or spot of wall Jack had been looking forward to since laying eyes on the pair. What was on it certainly made up for the difference: his two favorite people, stark naked.

The Doctor threw his head back as Rose swore, taking him inside of her for the first time. She was on top of the Time Lord, straddling him, the Doctor's hands at her waist. Jack chuckled as the Doctor cursed, Rose joining in with his amusement until a breathy moan was pulled from her mouth. The Doctor looked up, his gaze locking onto Jack's.

He smirked.

And oh, how Jack had to do something about that. "Bet I can make her come harder than you can," Jack challenged, straining for the pair of them and already knowing he'd only ever have one.

"I bet you can _try_," the Doctor agreed and did something to Rose that made her voice sound _delicious_. An excellent moan in that throat of hers.

"An' I bet," Rose interrupted, pressing her hands against the Doctor's chest, "that I can make _both_ of you come even harder."

Jack pressed his lower body against the boards of the loft, needing pressure, needing release and knowing he had to wait. "Now this I gotta see."

"You heard the man, Ro-_ ohhhh_…"

She rode the Doctor, hard, fast, a woman exquisite in the fall of her hair and the roll of her hips. Straining against his fly, Jack watched from above, thrusting down into old wood in time with her movements. The Doctor was babbling, the longed-for dark sensuality of his past self completely gone until it wasn't, until he grunted and his eyes opened, until he tore control away from Rose and rid himself of restraint.

Fumbling with the copied rhythm, finding it again, Jack ground down in time with Rose below and when the Doctor cried out, it could have almost been because of him. God, the look on his face, that wet lovely sound of lovemaking... In moments, it would be Jack's turn to lay down beneath Rose, to watch both of them above him, one gloriously close and the other torturously far. Not too long now, not with each of them panting like that, tense and taut and ready and Jack's hands gripped each other with the need to touch.

Gasping out, Rose arched, her climax taking the Doctor with her. Shouting wordlessly, her head thrown back, Rose's eyes squeezed shut and Jack stared into the Doctor's eyes instead, trembled beneath the rush and the want so clear in that gaze.

They switched places afterwards, both humans relentlessly teasing the Time Lord about being none too steady as he pulled himself up the ladder to take Jack's spot in the loft. Impatient, unable to wait, Jack slipped his fingers inside of Rose as she tore at the buttons of his shirt. He could feel the Doctor's seed inside of her, still warm. They moaned together, the Doctor making a muffled sound from above.

"Let's give him a show he'll never forget," Jack murmured into her ear, Rose sucking on his shoulder in what certainly felt like agreement.

They did.

.-.-.-.-.-.

Today has been very jarring. Extremely so.

And yes, he still hasn't come.

Wrong build, wrong way of moving, wrong color, but the association is still there, is still grabbing at his attention. It's obvious that Gwen thinks something's cropped up again, maybe something to do with the Cyberwoman. Why else would he look at Ianto like that, keep glancing and looking away? He's relieved on one level, grateful on Ianto's behalf. She doesn't know they're gone from fistfights to fucking, screwing with their own minds as much as each other's bodies.

He feels absurdly irritated and frustratingly aroused, betrayed by his own reactions. After too long of a morning, the clock displays the lunching hour and Gwen's concerned looks are put on hold until she gets back from whatever she's off to do with that boyfriend of hers. Owen's off too and even Tosh leaves today, heading out to some café Ianto's recommended. Ianto, however, stays.

It's just them, just the two of them left.

Ianto comes to his office, stands in the doorway and watches him, waits. Forcing himself not to glance is difficult, but hardly the most difficult thing he's ever done. Taking the initiative, the younger man crosses the threshold, almost strolls to stand before Jack's desk, so confident with that he thinks he knows.

"You've been looking at me," he says.

"I do that a lot," Jack answers, looking at his paperwork.

Ianto waits for him and it hurts. To know he can make someone do that, to understand it from both sides...

He should be used to this feeling by now.

"That's a new suit," Jack comments, his eyes following the lines of it.

It's his cue to approach, to come around to the other side of the desk and sit on the corner of it. "The Weevil bile didn't wash out of one of my old ones," Ianto explains, justifying the purchase to himself.

"Looks good," Jack says, fingers tracing up the younger man's thigh.

In answer, Ianto reaches down and opens the desk drawer where he knows Jack keeps the lube.

He takes Ianto against the wall, pushing the other man's trousers down and dropping his own. It's hard and fast and Jack refuses to let the other man undress any further than is necessary for fucking. Buried inside of him from behind, thrusting forcefully, Jack drives him forward, pushes until Ianto gets his hands on the wall and shoves against it for leverage. Jack's hands grip at the sides of the suit jacket, his face buried in the shoulder.

Only when Ianto cries out for him does Jack remember himself and take a very human cock in hand, doing things to it that humans very much like. When they come, Jack makes it messy, stains that new suit and apologizes with the promise of a blowjob.

In the end, he has to conclude that while this isn't the most efficient way of getting Ianto to stop wearing pinstripes, it's certainly the most entertaining. Jack likes making Ianto come, likes coming in Ianto. Loves the thought of Ianto coming because of him, needs to have that in his life.

And he hates it, just a little. The sooner the suit's gone for good, the better, he has to conclude, cleaning his office up as Ianto hurries off to clean himself up. It's not fair to either of them.

He's still not coming, in more than one meaning of the word.

Not for Jack, anyway.

.-.-.-.-.-.

While celebrating his first birthday in the triple digits, they got lost in a crowd. Jack knew he'd found the Doctor when he heard the screaming.

People gathered around the man on the sidewalk, surrounded him as he convulsed, inhuman shrieks of pain torn from his throat. Moving on instinct, Jack doubled the damage, shouldered his way through the throng, reached for him. Still writhing on the cobblestones, the Doctor scrambled away from him, frightening the crowd into giving him space.

Jack pulled back immediately, raising his hands up. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't see anything more than the revulsion on the other man's face. "Doc, what-"

"Don't touch me!" the Time Lord bellowed, the words warped by pain. "Get back!"

Rose was at the Doctor's side, stumbled over her dress and nearly fell in her hurry to hold him. He clutched at her for support, crying out, shaking, every line of his body traced in agony.

Jack ran.

Hours later, Rose found him on a park bench. He heard the rustle of cloth, heard her soft unladylike cursing at her attempts to sit while wearing a corset. Her hand on his back nearly made him look up, nearly brought his head out of his hands. Palms pressed against his eyes, he stayed as he was, simply breathing.

"Jack, I…"

He shook his head, waylaying her apology. "Is he all right?"

"Yeah," Rose said. "Managed to spring himself out of the asylum they tried to lock him up in. Back in the TARDIS now."

Raising his head and lowering his hands, he nodded, tried to force down the lump in his throat that wouldn't leave. "He's safe," Jack agreed, "but is he all right?"

"Will be, yeah," she answered. "Seemed more worried about you, really."

Jack looked down at his hands, studied the lines of his palms as if they would somehow spell out what he was, as if there would be a clear mark to warn others away. They stayed mere lines, simply patterns in skin. Trying to swallow down that lump, Jack shrugged and gave her a grin. "Oh, you know. Seeing you in that dress is enough to make anything better." Times had changed enough for the bustle to be gone, but he still loved to tease her about it.

Rose bit her lip and tried not to cry.

"Sweetheart…" He cupped her cheek in his hand, touched her with hesitation she didn't deserve. No pain, no agony, no repercussions of being Wrong; not with Rose. He pulled her into a hug, nearly pulled her onto his lap, time period be damned.

"'m sorry," she confessed to his coat. "God, Jack, 'm so sorry. I never meant t' – never wanted -"

"Shhh…" Resting his chin on the top of her head, he rocked her, held her against him. So long since he'd had contact like this, since he could touch someone. "I'm alive," he murmured, pressing a kiss to her hair. "You wanted me alive." Another kiss. "And I am." A third.

She trembled slightly, hiccuped, still forcing down her tears. "I'm sorry I didn't do it right."

His heart tightened in agreement. "Shhh… it's all right, Rose. S'okay." He held her, didn't want to let go. It had been one simple error, one instance of being separated in a crowd and getting too close, bringing his ever-present Wrongness too close to the Time Lord's highly tuned senses. But worst of all, he'd nearly forgotten in his fear for the other man, nearly touched him.

"We love you," Rose tried to explain and her lips tasted of salt.

.-.-.-.-.-.

He keeps finding rose petals where there shouldn't be any to be found. He can't help wondering who will die this time, can't stop the little game that plays around the inside of his skull. Suzie's gone. Who next? Which one of his team?

He touches Ianto – _holds him_ – more often than the man is used to, listens to Owen patiently – _less impatiently than usual _– more often than he wants to, and he never fails – _almost never fails_ – to say a little something to Tosh. Gwen, he has hopes for, counting on beginner's luck to pull her through what's to come. Not that it's helped her so far.

Weather patterns, mysterious flowers, and now Estelle's fairies. It's all happening again, all starting over, and Jack gets the horrible feeling that he'll watch this cycle repeat forever. Or the rest of his life which isn't much different, not since the last time he checked.

Why does it have to be a rose? There's a part of him that's terrified over the choice in flower, some arrogant part of him that wonders if the petals were chosen specifically to frighten him. To taint her name. His personal flower of loss.

He knows better, but...

Maybe he doesn't.

Maybe he never has.

Ianto never would, but Jack keeps waiting for him to initiate a hug, maybe even ask for one. Jack can't initiate, can't ask – not for that, not for tenderness, not from the man he's shown so little of it to – and it's got nothing to do with pride. Almost nothing. He can't let them see him scared, can't lean the weight of his years against the young Welshman's frame. He's already done enough damage, is still doing it. It's a world of damage he lives in now, a world of lies.

He shows one to Gwen, an important one that he only wishes could be a truth. It would be so much easier, so much simpler. Estelle Cole looks at him warmly, smiles at him with remembered fondness meant for the man Jack used to be. It's the coat as much as his face, he tells himself, but even he doesn't believe it.

They disagree, but it's almost banter. She's affectionate, but it's almost love. He's protective, but it's almost a claim. It was forever and a while ago, but it's still all there. He holds her as the son of her first love and she breathes him in, both living for a moment in sweet memory.

He misses the way she used to smell, the way her hair used to be thick and catch the light, draw the eye. He misses the curve of her back beneath her dress, the perfect little place to rest his hand as they exchanged kisses and impossible vows. He misses her arm linked with his and wonders why he keeps coming back to her.

Besides the obvious reason, of course.

Gwen notices because that's what she does. It is, in fact, what he hired her for. She's going to want him to talk, might ask or demand that he do. Maybe he won't or maybe he'll need to. He's not sure which, not yet.

Less than twelve hours later, Estelle is dead.

.-.-.-.-.-.

She was far too beautiful, far too young and immediately the sole focus of his gaze.

He watched her and she watched him, the crowded Astoria ballroom as good as empty. He smiled and she blushed; she smiled back and he bowed his head before raising his eyes back to hers, sipping something pleasantly alcoholic if only to have a use for his hands.

The sounds of Glen Miller's music filled the air and Jack waited for it stop, for the approaching moment to become separate, to become simply his. For nearly a century, he'd been free to play as he liked, go dancing in the absence of his lovers. This wasn't the first dance without them, not by far.

It did happen to be the first love.

The song ended, the rhythm changed, and Jack took her hand to kiss it. "May I have the pleasure?" he murmured, lips brushing her skin.

Her smile was both shy and daring, naïve in a way that wasn't for all of her eagerness to fall in love. Eager to fall in love with him, and he wasn't about to change her mind. Already, he adored the light in her eyes as she asked, "Might I know your name first?"

"First Lieutenant Jonathan Harkness," he replied, giving her his name of the moment and wanting more, "but you can call me 'Jack'."

"Jack," she said musingly, testing it out on him, studying his face as she did so. "Jack," she concluded, innocently tempting lips curving with her approval. He could see the thoughts turning through her mind, see the direction they were taking and really, he should have told her no, should have told her that it was impossible, that this was a minute old and far too soon for either of them to be thinking of lifetimes.

She told him her name and he told her none of this.

"Estelle," he said, using her name for the first time in much the same way she'd used his. Having had enough time to learn Latin and thus the meanings of names, he resisted the urge to ruin the moment with a cheap line, by calling her aptly named, by telling her that she shone like the heavenly body she was named for. He couldn't remember the last time he'd thought of a star as a "heavenly body" and that was what made him sure: he was high on romance, muddled with love.

Adoring the seduction of the willing, he led her out onto the dance floor, leading her through the steps only at first. They stood closer, spun tighter, burned brighter as the night went on, needing all of a minute to fall in sync with one another. She filled his arms nicely, reached for him with a hesitancy he was sure would fade. Knees bumped and they laughed, teasing each other gently, each passing the blame onto their dance partner. She turned her face up to his, her young, young face and he kissed this girl who had so much time left, who just might want to spend it with him and never go. Who just might be able to, until that final rift spread between them.

She wasn't experienced or knowledgeable; her tongue stayed in her mouth when she smiled. Her face was free of guilt, her body free of pain. He felt as if he were holding something unstained, someone who had seen war but had never beheld true destruction, never heard of anything so foul as a Dalek.

One more slow song, one slow, swaying seduction of bodies silently speaking with the whispering brush of cloth and the telling touch of the hand: that was all it took.

"I think you should know," he whispered into the delicate shell of her ear, twining her dark hair between his fingers, "that I happen to be in love with you."

Her eyes were full of a child's hope, an adult's intelligence. "For tonight?" she asked him, her arms still around his shoulders despite her doubt. "Or for forever?" Her hand trailed down, rested on his heart through his uniform. She meant it as a gesture with a pointed meaning, but from her, from his star with hopeful eyes, it only managed to be sweet, the sweetest thing he'd ever seen.

"For as long as you'll love me back," he answered. "And then a while longer."

She touched his hair and gave herself to him without a backwards glance. "Forever and a while, then," she answered, rising up on tiptoe.

He ducked his head, pressed his lips to hers in their second kiss. She clung to him as he held to her, startled under his hands before relaxing into him as he made a pass at her mouth with his tongue.

Two kisses at seventeen and she was already ruined for anyone else. Maybe it was unseemingly twentieth century of him, but he liked the sound of that.

He met her parents two weeks later at Christmas, became part of the family before the New Year, uneasiness over the age gap put aside when they promised to wait. They were together always, every single day of his leave, desperately in love. Air raid sirens sounded and he held her tight, cradled her against his chest and thought only of if he could really protect her, of how badly his resurrection would frighten her. He thought of how to explain, how to tell her that he really would love her for forever and a while. He wondered if she could possibly understand his life, if she could somehow accept his involvement in a semi-alien trio. If she would know when he lied to her about it.

They still had time, though. Time enough to wait, to not do anything even rasher – if there was such an act – than giving away the remainder of his heart after five minutes. Time to love, time for her to grow, time for him to drop slow hints for her to gather.

They were absolutely inseparable, right up until they weren't.

The orders came through and First Lieutenant Jonathan Harkness was promoted and repositioned. "Captain Jack," Estelle called him, beaming with pride and crying with loss. He pulled her into his arms and shook with laughter and fear, irony and worry combining inside of him. All too soon, "time enough" failed to live up to its name and he couldn't resist those orders without destroying the man he had created for Estelle to trust, to adore.

"I love you," he told her instead of good-bye, knowing that nothing he said could stop her from waiting for him.

"I love you more," she answered and, for the sake of her poor little heart, he hoped she was wrong.

.-.-.-.-.-.

There's nearly a body in here for every time he's died. He's counted, on both accounts. So many frozen corpses; so many fallen friends.

Almost friends, in some cases. Not-so-much friends, in a few. And rarer, far rarer, are the very-much-more-than-friends.

For some reason, those who fall in the last category don't tend to leave bodies behind.

He's shaken, after this last ordeal, after the prospect of life becoming not simply unending, but unendingly filled with Suzie. He remembers how she was when he met her, how she was when she shot him.

When Ianto offers to take care of the body, Jack's urge to embrace him has nothing to do with sex.

So he does, just a little. And maybe he leans, just a little. The Welshman's frame is sturdier than it looks, solid for all that it needs support. Jack knows what he wants in that instant and it scares him. He's seen what happened as a result of Ianto being in love, knows how disastrous it can be first hand. Jack doesn't always need to be held and Ianto would never let go.

Not that he would hold on to begin with, of course. Not really. Not enough to worry about. Just... enough.

"You okay?" Jack asks because he needs to be the strong one.

"Yup," Ianto says in a way that doesn't simply border on casual. He's dropped the "sir" and isn't afraid to let Jack know that he's aware of what the captain's doing. "It was a little rough for a little while, though," he adds, his concern as carefully understated as ever.

"Gwen's bouncing back fast," Jack replies. "Back to normal we go."

"Yes sir," Ianto says and takes care of the body for him.

Roughly thirty-eight innuendoes and twelve necrophilia jokes come to mind on the heels of that thought and Jack wonders when that became a coping mechanism. Wonders if it didn't start as one.

He follows Ianto eventually, going to the man before he's done. It's an excuse for the joking, the endless innuendo, he reasons, but when he talks to the man, all of it has disappeared. They talk together. They worry separately.

It feels so familiar and he's missed it too much to try to dissect his own motives. He won't determine whether or not Ianto's a substitute as well as a distraction, too afraid that he might be.

He has more to think about soon enough, unexpected developments in an unexpected invitation. They usually stumble into it, usually wait for Jack to initiate or stare or make some comment that qualifies as initiating. And then, after, Jack has yet another thing to think about:

As it turns out, there _is_ quite the list.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"Can't believe we didn't think of this sooner," Jack murmured, stretched out on his stomach, a scent he needs far more of surrounding him.

The Doctor made a noise in his ear, a soft hum that Jack had never caught before. "Told you we could manage."

Jack rolled onto his side, watching the man lying in the park grass a carefully measured distance away. The warm weight of the Doctor's overcoat fell off of him and he readjusted it, setting down the coffee tin with its attached string to do so. It was two o'clock in the morning, more or less, on January 23rd, 1950. Nearly a hundred years, on one planet. He should have been an old man, but he wasn't, didn't even feel like it some days.

Holding the tin back against his ear, he caught the tail end of some comment about the time and taxies and rides home together and he wondered if the Doctor knew he could hear him. They were both used to muttering to themselves when on their own together, holding separate, parallel conversations that somehow failed to be one-sided.

It was good and bad at once, not needing Rose to form that bridge between them. Good to know it could happen, bad to know it would. As time passed, as they adjusted to one another, the Doctor would visit him alone, leaving Rose with her mother and coming back with her a day later. A day later for the Doctor, of course. For Jack, it could often be longer than a year. Worth it, though, not to waste Rose's life away. It was a selfish gamble he played, trying to save Rose's days for later, for her to grow and live and grow too old for the TARDIS and one day stay with him for good. Almost for good, with the Doctor always popping in. It was their plan, the most long-term plan any of them had ever had.

No matter how lonely he was right now, it was going to be completely worth it.

Even knowing the long parting soon to come, Jack could only look at him, this Time Lord under the starlight. He breathed him in, nose against the borrowed garment, savoring the sight of the Doctor wrapped in his greatcoat.

Trying to nestle into the Doctor's overcoat had taught him a surprising amount about the other man's build, about his lean, almost scrawny body. He'd never attempted to wear it before, leaving that task to Rose. Now, he learned the width of the Doctor's shoulders through the contrast with his own, the slim figure the coat was meant to cover becoming apparent as it failed to fit him.

They had made love on this overcoat, separately, to the same woman. They'd smelled one another on it, far more than once. It had been abused and stained and cleaned with the amazing power of what was undoubtedly a sonic washing machine.

"You're quiet tonight," the Doctor commented, London accent tinged with tin.

"You should talk," he shot back. "You're usually rambling by this point."

"Mm." It was a sound Jack wanted to hear more often, that vaguely amused agreement. "You're right, I am. Though you might want to be careful, telling me to talk," he added.

"Once I get you going, you might never stop," Jack agreed.

"Never ever." A quick, playful reply.

"Think we'll ever run out of things to say?" he wondered, musing aloud before remembering that they weren't communicating via shouts.

"Oh, I don't know," the Doctor answered, stretching the words out. "Semi-infinite universe out there, Jack." He gestured skywards, the wool sleeve swallowing his arm. "Just waiting for us."

Jack sighed, not watching the sky but the distance between them.

The Doctor looked back at him, his glasses glinting in the starlight, and propped himself up on one elbow. "And waiting and waiting and waiting, yeah. But that's not the point. We'll get there."

"Yeah, I know," Jack agreed, not willing to say anything else, never willing to crush any spark of hope the Time Lord could hold between his hearts.

They stood before the sun rose, shook dew off of their borrowed garment. The Doctor started to put the greatcoat down on the grass for him to retrieve, but Jack shook his head, holding the brown overcoat over his arm, hugging it to his chest.

Understanding dawned in those eyes, Jack wanted to imagine. It must have. There was no other reason for the Doctor to sling Jack's greatcoat back around his shoulders, to stand enveloped in it and draw it shut around him, utterly encompassed in the dew-damp fabric.

They held each other, at a distance.

.-.-.-.-.-.

There's a Dogon Sixth Eye on his desk and Jack is sorely tempted. Tempted for what, he doesn't know. Two missing years of memory are long gone now, two years that he's lived without for so long that he doesn't think there's a place in his mind for them any longer. No, not that.

After checking to make certain he's alone and will be for the night, Jack reaches for the cool surface. His fingertips brush it experimentally, the psychic training he has at last coming in handy for something. He touches with both hand and mind, searching.

He closes his eyes and the smell of wool and leather surrounds him. Choking, he fights against the pressure around his chest, struggling before he realizes what it is. That connection made, Jack gives himself over to the path of the Eye, surrenders just enough for the sensory impact to grow, to revive and spark through his nerves.

Sitting in the Hub, he's in the TARDIS. Parked behind his desk, he's being almost lifted off of his feet, crushed against a chest solid and alien. His hands are around the Eye, but his arms are around the Doctor. A voice he doesn't hear exclaims with a manic laugh, "Give the man a medal!" A rush shoots through him at the Northern voice and an almost tangible joy fills his stomach, expands his lungs.

They're talking and touching, flirting and fixing machinery. They're together, the three of them, Rose handing him a real screwdriver before they both roll their eyes at the Doctor, copying the Time Lord's frequent expression.

Jack hears his voice in his ears, feels his stationary mouth move and shape words. "I told you it was only the feedback circuit. The ionization charge _had_ to be it."

"Don't let it go to your head," the Doctor shoots back, an abrupt transition from his earlier glee at having the problem finally found. He's halfway beneath the console by this point, though, so it's difficult to tell how much of it he means.

He grins anyway, makes Rose laugh when he answers. "The ionization charge? Wouldn't want to. Sounds painful."

"Care to find out?" the Doctor offers to him, sliding himself halfway out.

"No sir," Jack replies and earns the Doctor's tight-eyed grin, the one that he thinks might mean that he's being a bit of a stupid ape.

Rose laughs again, the only clear indication of a point scored in the men's back-and-forth game. Jack doesn't know who's winning any longer, only that Rose is happy. It certainly feels like a win.

"Is it just me, or can you smell the testosterone in here?" Rose inquires, molesting her teeth with her tongue as she smiles.

"Trust me, sweetheart," he answers, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her to him, "it's not just you."

"Oi!" the Doctor yells and Jack lets her go, his toe evidently a little too far over that line. "One of you pass me that spanner, would y'?"

No line has been crossed, Jack finds, discovers as he tries to cross it. He traces the side of the Doctor's leg with his foot, black denim covering calf and thigh and hip. It's all in reach with the Doctor down there, all so easily available and so impossibly allowed to continue.

"Hey, Doc..." Jack starts to say, nudging a little at that hip, watching Rose's eyes and encouraged by her nod.

"Buy me a drink first," the Doctor replies, an answer crisp and clear and possibly even sincere for all its flippancy.

Eyebrows raised, Jack looks to Rose, asks, "Do I have to buy you one, too?"

Rose shakes her head, smiling, that tongue of hers back at work. "Nah, that's the Doctor's job." And then she adds, touching his heart in a way he'll never understand, "But someone's gotta buy you one, yeah?"

He pulls himself out of the memory before it breaks him.

.-.-.-.-.-.

If he didn't know more about death, he'd say that the waiting killed him.

But he did know better. He knew what gunpowder burns looked like on his own chest, he knew what arsenic tasted like, and he knew that dying of starvation never made anyone less hungry when they woke up. He knew what it felt like to wake up on a satellite over a hundred thousand years in the future, wake up surrounded by the dust of humans and Daleks alike. He knew that jump back in time had killed him when before he'd only thought himself lucky to be alive.

No, the waiting didn't kill him. That would have been kind.

Every time the TARDIS dematerialized, every single time, panic gripped his throat, pulled him back to the Gamestation with his body still tingling from extermination. He saw that dark wall behind the ruined computers, behind the Delta wave generator with its detonator left unused.

They'd come back, he told himself. They'd always come back. Over a century of waiting for them on and off, he'd learned that much.

They were late, he admitted to himself. They were often late. Over a century of hearing about the Doctor's bad driving, he knew that well.

They'd gotten into trouble, he realized. They did that a lot. Over a century of wanting to do it with them, he expected as much.

He waited, he trusted, and he walked through the mass of life around him in a state of confusion. He stumbled back into Cardiff and never left. He waited, but he doubted. He trusted, but he wondered. He loved, and he was very much afraid.

One day, years before she was born, he realized that Rose Tyler was dead.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"Sir, when you were at university in America, did you belong to a fraternity?" Ianto asks him one day, Welsh vowels ringing nicely into his earpiece.

"Sorry, what?" Jack asks, waving his hand at Tosh as she looked up from her computer screen. Mouthing _"Not you"_ at her, he continues, "Why do you ask?"

"A man came into the front office and gave me a letter for you. Said something about a possible reunion coming up, if you wanted to go." There's the sound of paper being sorted from the other end. There's the sound of Ianto wanting to ask so much more. "Two Greek letters on it. I think that's... Did you belong to a Theta Sigma?"

"Yeah," Jack says slowly as something in him breaks, as something in him heals. "Yeah I did."

He's come.

Five minutes later, Jack's out of the Hub and into the falling night, the envelope in his pocket, a note in his hand. There's something else, too, something that seems utterly random until he reads the note. There are only two short lines, but they perfectly explain what a child's collectable sports card is doing in his hand three thousand years before it's printed.

__

Rose bought this for you. She remembered he was your favorite.

She's given him his life, her love, and yet it's a piece of paper that threatens to break him. It makes no sense, but then, it never did.

Jack finds a coffee tin down by the water, finds a coffee tin with a string attached. The string leads into the dark, into where broken lights have yet to be replaced. His patience long exhausted, he gives the string an abrupt tug, yanks the tin on the other end out of a Time Lord's hand and draws it into the light.

He backs away to let him near.

Stepping into the dimness of the streetlamp, the Doctor looks the way that Jack expects him to look: like a widower. Like a man who has lost his world all over again. Like a man filled with shame.

Familiar red Chucks tread the pavement and he's wearing the overcoat they made love on. It seems larger on him now, the Time Lord smaller. His hair tries to compensate, reaching in every direction for a hand to smooth it down, questing after Rose's touch even now. He bends down, his face turned to the tin he reaches for. He stands and holds it to his ear.

"Canary Wharf?" Jack asks, two words that mean everything. Canary Wharf was Torchwood and so is he. Maybe there was something he could have done, something he could have changed.

"She's trapped," the Doctor says, putting forth two more. Jack's heart swells and breaks and tries to rush back into the older man's hands. "She's not dead, Jack, only where we can't reach her. She's in a parallel world, with her mother and Mickey. Got her father back, through that," he adds, words stumbling out in that well-remembered babble. "Sort of. That's something."

"She didn't mean to go." Jack knows it, could bet everything he is on that fact.

The Doctor turns to the water, leans on the railing. He looks so lost, so unimaginably frail. "No," he says, voice breaking.

He knows the pain it will bring, but he's waited too long not to ask. "What happened?"

The reply is slow in coming, the Doctor holding the tin between his hands, rolling it the way Jack would while waiting. Jack waits just a little longer, tin to his ear.

"We went to one of those little markets she loved," the older man says at last. "Bought bazoolium for her mother, that card for you. Trinkets. Brought her back home after that, planned on leaving her with Jackie for the night and..." The Doctor trails off, head tilted downward, the dim light of the streetlamps shining on his hair.

"Never happened," Jack says for him, says it because someone has to.

"Never happened," the Doctor agrees with a sigh, with a pause. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I know." It's not a lie, but it's not forgiveness either.

"I said good-bye to her," the Doctor says in rush, words spilling from his mouth. "There was such a small gap left between the universes. Had to hurry and even then..." Here, he slows, unable to verbally outrun grief. "I burned up a sun, just to say good-bye. I couldn't- I'm sorry," he says again, choking on words Jack thinks he already knows.

"I can't go in the TARDIS," Jack states, using hard fact to shield them both from a reality far harder. "If you'd tried to bring me onboard, neither of us would have been able see her."

"It was two minutes," the Doctor tells him, telling him so much more than that. It wasn't blame that kept the Time Lord away, not a fault assigned to Jack due to his future choice in occupation. It was guilt, guilt and cowardice.

Of course it was. Jack's known that, known that forever. It's the face-down side to the Doctor's golden coin, the part of him Jack's always known is there. He's never considered it before this moment, but he's always known it.

He'll say he's always known it. It'll make these memories less painful when he recalls them. Of course it will.

"She deserved a lifetime," Jack replies, answers as he does because it's not a point they'll ever argue over.

"She does," the Doctor agrees and it's the present tense that counts.

He asks his hope, aware that it will only be crushed. "Any sign of the big Bad Wolf?"

The Doctor shakes his head and Jack can only wish to see his face clearly, to watch his expressions and search the depths behind his eyes. "No." He looks at Jack and adds, as if trying not to break him, "Not yet."

"Maybe someday," Jack says, no longer sure of what he's waiting for.

"Maybe," the Doctor replies.

The night darkens around them and they stand together, apart.


End file.
